"I think I shall be very happy here," was in Molly's thoughts, as she
turned away at length, and began to prepare for bed. Before long the
Squire's words, relating to her father's second marriage, came across
her, and spoilt the sweet peace of her final thoughts. "Who could he
have married?" she asked herself. "Miss Eyre? Miss Browning? Miss
Phoebe? Miss Goodenough?" One by one, each of these was rejected
for sufficient reasons. Yet the unsatisfied question rankled in her
mind, and darted out of ambush to disturb her dreams.
Mrs. Hamley did not come down to breakfast; and Molly found out
with a little dismay, that the Squire and she were to have it by
themselves. On this first morning he put aside his newspapers--one
an old established Tory journal, with all the local and county
news, which was the most interesting to him; the other the _Morning
Chronicle_, which he called his dose of bitters, and which called out
many a strong expression and tolerably pungent oath. To-day, however,
he was "on his manners," as he afterwards explained to Molly; and he
plunged about, trying to find ground for a conversation. He could
talk of his wife and his sons, his estate, and his mode of farming;
his tenants, and the mismanagement of the last county election.
Molly's interests were her father, Miss Eyre, her garden and pony;
in a fainter degree Miss Brownings, the Cumnor Charity School, and
the new gown that was to come from Miss Rose's; into the midst of
which the one great question, "Who was it that people thought it was
possible papa might marry?" kept popping up into her mouth, like a
troublesome Jack-in-the-box. For the present, however, the lid was
snapped down upon the intruder as often as he showed his head between
her teeth. They were very polite to each other during the meal; and
it was not a little tiresome to both. When it was ended the Squire
withdrew into his study to read the untasted newspapers. It was
the custom to call the room in which Squire Hamley kept his coats,
boots, and gaiters, his different sticks and favourite spud, his
gun and fishing-rods, "the study." There was a bureau in it, and a
three-cornered arm-chair, but no books were visible. The greater part
of them were kept in a large, musty-smelling room, in an unfrequented
part of the house; so unfrequented that the housemaid often neglected
to open the window-shutters, which looked into a part of the grounds
over-grown with the luxuriant growth of shrubs. Indeed, it was a
tradition in the servants' hall that, in the late squire's time--he
who had been plucked at college--the library windows had been boarded
up to avoid paying the window-tax. And when the "young gentlemen"
were at home the housemaid, without a single direction to that
effect, was regular in her charge of this room; opened the windows
and lighted fires daily, and dusted the handsomely-bound volumes,
which were really a very fair collection of the standard literature
in the middle of the last century. All the books that had been
purchased since that time were held in small book-cases between
each two of the drawing-room windows, and in Mrs. Hamley's own
sitting-room upstairs. Those in the drawing-room were quite enough to
employ Molly; indeed, she was so deep in one of Sir Walter Scott's
novels that she jumped as if she had been shot, when an hour or so
after breakfast the Squire came to the gravel-path outside one of the
windows, and called to ask her if she would like to come out of doors
and go about the garden and home-fields with him.